Computer hardware and software vendors seeking to expand their market internationally are required to localize the related operating system and software applications to accommodate the language, laws, customs and culture of individual target markets. Different cultures and countries have different rules for punctuation, grammar, currency measures and conversions, number formats and other unique factors associated with a particular location. For example, the Chinese language includes thousands of characters requiring a double byte character set to represent a single character, whereas the character set used in the United States includes less than 256 characters each of which can be accommodated by a single 8 bit byte.
Localization is a labor and cost intensive process that requires the employ of both translators and software designers. The translation itself is often the largest and most difficult portion of the localization process. Often when resources of a software product are translated there may be a number of associated problems that arise. For example, a dialog or window that is translated may need to be resized because the translated text within the dialog or window is larger than provided by the software product in the original language. Often, the translation of a text string is significantly longer than the original source string, depending on the languages involved in the translation.
The localization process is often required for each stage in development for a particular software product. As aspects of the software product change and new features are added, previous features of the software product may be moved, renamed, or otherwise changed. Accordingly, the newer version of the product may have a number of changes when compared to the previous version, other than the new material and features added. Localization of the product requires discovery and accounting of these changes, otherwise the new version of the localized product may include a host of errors. Customers demand that the localization of different releases of the same product remain consistent, and that new releases and user updates are available at the same time as they are announced in the original country where the software product originated.